Those Ripper Humbuckers probably have something to do with it as well. Their windings are turned 90 degrees to the way you normally see them in a humbucker. Anybody know why that was done.
The Bill Lawrence designed pickups on the Ripper combined with the passive midrange choke have everything to do with the way a Ripper sounds, and why nothing else quite copies it.
The 90 degree tilt of the coils is what’s called a “sidewinder” humbucker. Gibson has used various incarnations of the sidewinder design for many years on many different basses and a few guitars. The goal was to come up with a pickup that had the response and sonic characteristics of a P90 pickup but without the noise. Like all single coils, P90s can get pretty noisy.
With dual coil pickups you run into a design consideration called “aperture” - which exists on a macro and micro scale.
On a vibrating string, different overtones appear at different points of the string along it’s length. Which is why where a pickup is located on the body relative to the bridge has a big impact on the fundamental tone of an instrument. Moving a pickup even a half inch up or down from the bridge will produce an audible difference in sound.
With two pickups the placement becomes even more important because you need to balance the higher output of the neck pickup where the vibrating string has more excursion against the weaker output of the bridge pickup - and also look for a pleasing blend of overtones each pickup is hearing. If you don’t you can end up with a muddy, thin, unpleasantly nasal, or harsh overall tone when both pickups are engaged.
On the micro level, a regular dual coil humbucking pickup also has an aperture. With the coils side by side each coil is picking up the string at two different spots and hearing two slightly different sets of overtones which produces a thicker, “fuller,” more harmonically complex sound. Almost like the tiniest hint of a chorusing or doubling effect. Two magnets also equal more available electrical energy so the overall output level is higher.
With a sidewinder design, the coils are rotated 90 degrees and the pole pieces are placed between them. So the string is picked up at what’s essentially only one point along it’s length. So you get what’s theoretically a single coil sound with the noise cancellation benefits of a humbucker.
In practice it’s a little more complicated then that. Because the coil geometries and strength of the magnets determines how wide the sensing area around each pole piece is. Hotter coils and stronger magnets will pick up more of the string area above the pole piece and get more overtones in the signal. So it’s a balancing act.
Bill Lawrence’s genius was in doing an unusually good balancing act. Through careful coil design and the selection of a very specific ceramic magnet (an Indox-6 if memory serves) he succeeded in creating an
extremely narrow aperture sidewinder. Which is what gives the Ripper it’s characteristic clear core sound.
Those pickups, plus the cleverly versatile passive tonestack and switching scheme, are the heart and soul of the Ripper. Change out any of it (as has been done to so many Rippers) and you no longer have a Ripper IMO.
Rippers don’t sound like any other bass Gibson (or anybody else) has manufactured before or since. You want the Ripper sound, you get a Ripper, or you do without. It’s like a Ric in that respect - sometimes copied but never duplicated.
Thank you Bill Lawrence!
And thank you Gibson for having enough
yarbles during that short period in your company history that you were willing to think outside the balance sheet and take big chances on innovative design.
The fact it went largely unappreciated by a bass playing public (that was still trapped in Leo Fender’s gravity well) in no way diminishes what you accomplished during the so-called Norlin Years.
